Touch sensitive screens are rapidly gaining popularity among users of interactive computing devices. Corporations, such as, Apple®, RIM®, Google® and Microsoft® have developed a large number of devices and/or applications that rely heavily on touch sensitive user interfaces. One particular area of increasing interest within the realm of touch sensitive user interfaces are multi-user (MU) touch detection and touch sensitive user interfaces.
In one example, a touch-screen may be a user display device that is configured to detect the presence and location of a user initiated touch gesture within the display area of the device. The ability to manipulate information by touching a screen provides an easy and intuitive way of operating a computing device. With recent reductions in the price of such touch-screen devices, large touch-sensitive screens are expected to become increasingly popular in business, education, and for retail customers.
A new trend in touch sensitive display technology is to have large tabletop displays, which are viewable by multiple viewers. Examples of these large displays may include a “collaboration Wall®” from Perceptive Pixel®, and other devices associated with Microsoft's “surface Project®”. The collaboration wall is a large (81″×48″) monitor developed by Perceptive Pixel, which was initially developed for military applications. The collaboration wall has received most of its publicity because of its use by the CNN® news network during its coverage of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.
Such large displays provide new methods of data manipulation. For example, one or more users can move objects or other data illustrated on the display screen and/or manipulate information on the display screen in an interactive and intuitive way that is viewable to others.
Researchers of such touch-screen devices continue to innovate new ways to improve the touch-screen operation experience for tabletop and related wall-mounted displays. However, there are numerous design challenges and dilemmas that must be addressed in the creation of such displays. These problems include but are not limited to, how to detect intended touch from unintended (accidental) touch, how to identify multiple simultaneous touches by one or more users, how to improve the responsiveness of the computing devices to the various touch input signals received, etc.
Another example operation of the multi-touch display is with the arts, which have portrayed potential uses of such multi-touch technology as being the future of multi-user communication tools. For example, the 2002 science-fiction film “Minority Report©” provided different multi-touch features such as enlarging and moving objects around the display area. Additionally, the television series “CSI: Miami©” introduced both surface and wall displays, similar to Microsoft's surface project, in its sixth television season. Another form of a multi-touch computer display was included in the motion picture “The Island©”, where the “professor” has a multi-touch desktop device that he uses to organize files, which was based on an early version of Microsoft's surface technology. Such technology can also be seen in the film “Quantum of Solace©.”
Wide availability of large touch sensitive screens makes it possible for two or more users to collaborate and work together using a single touch sensitive screen. With the increasing adoption of touch screens, and, more particularly, multi-user touch screens, an increase in the performance and usability of detecting and interpreting inputs from multiple users is necessary to keep up with the increased demand of such devices.